Why Being "Positive" Might Be Bad For You

Have you noticed the cultural pressure to “Be Positive” or “Be Strong” or “Focus on the Good”?

It's as if we think that acknowledging or empathizing with painful experiences inadvertently creates more of them.

I hear it all the time.

“I would never do therapy,” someone said to me disdainfully, “All that focus on bad feelings and old stories will simply create more of them in my life. I don’t want to attract negativity like that.”

Or this, “I don’t want to talk about the trauma from my childhood because I’m stronger than that and don’t want to be a victim.”

Even in NVC-style practice groups, where we practice being present to emotions as a first step in connecting, people sometimes try to make each other “feel better” or to “focus on more positive feelings and needs” in their attempts to help.

We are afraid that by turning towards emotional pain that we are somehow inviting more of it.

We fear that feeling the disappointment and hurt that arises in life may get interpreted as weakness.

We believe that the best way to help others is to get them "out" of their "negative" feelings.

But Be Careful: An over-focus on positivity can be a subtle form of denial, repression and avoidance.

So called "negative emotions" often carry life-serving messages, and suppressing or ignoring them can increase stress and more dis-ease.

Avoiding how we feel can be a way of resisting life. Willfully looking the other way when something arises within us is yet another way of working against ourselves; being at war with ourselves.

Yes, sometimes re-telling a story over and again with no real connection to metabolizing or releasing it, may entrench the very thinking and feeling habits that you are trying to shift - and sometimes, it serves a profound AHA moment that allows someone to finally release an old narrative.

Yes, sometimes pulling out to a broader perspective and resourcing yourself with a reminder of all that is good in your life can be supportive - and sometimes it can feel like a minimizing, dismissing or abandoning of someone's lived experience.

Yes, sometimes asking about someone's feelings, inquiring about their needs can be supportive - and sometimes that strategy promotes more mistrust.

We're invited to get present to whatever is arising in the moment if we seek accurately attuned responses in any given relationship or context.

"Bad" feelings included. They just want our presence.

At any time we can choose to open to life, or to defend against it. To expand our capacity to feel and love, or to constrict our capacity to feel and love.

Perhaps it's more helpful to think about feelings as side-effects or symptoms of a deeper truth: they are important indicators of something important happening in the wider system of your soul and self.

Emotions provide data about our needs, about the things we value, about the things we want to move towards and the things we want to move away from.

Lonely feelings may tell us about our desire for companionship and community.

Sad feelings may tell us about our need for mourning, grieving and honoring loss.

Frustrated feelings may tell us about our desire to become more aligned with ourselves and our desire for ease or simplicity.

Develop a loving relationship with your feelings: all of them.

There are no ugly feelings.

They simply want to deliver an important message, draw your attention to an important internal experience, and then move on.

Give them each a name, greet them with tenderness, and ask yourself what message and wisdom they bring you about the state of your deeply universal human needs.